For the last thirty years, director Quentin Tarantino has taken the Hollywood world by storm. From the gory yet captivating Kill Bill series (2003-2004) to the cult classic known as Pulp Fiction (1994), Tarantino has established himself as a visionary, a rebel, and a pure cinematic genius. While I could talk about his careers and his works for many, many pages, I have decided today to focus on my absolute favorite–Inglorious Basterds (2009). In the following post, I will explore this absolute classic, and why it is hailed as the “WWII film to end all WWII films”.

Inglorious Basterds takes place during WWII, and follows various storylines throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. Lt. Aldo Raine, nicknamed “Aldo the Apache”, leads his motley crew of American and Jewish soldiers through Europe in search of any way to bring down the Third Reich. They eventually join forces with undercover agents Bridget von Hammersmark and Lt. Archie Hicox to begin plotting ways to assassinate the Reich’s key players. Their stories intertwine with Shoshanna Dreyfus, a Jewish theatre owner “passing” as gentile seeking retribution for her family’s execution at the hands of ruthless Nazi soldier, Colonel Hans S.S. Landa. The climax centers around Shoshanna’s cinema, her forced hosting of a Nazi film premiere, and the explosive plans from all sides to sabotage it completely.

Besides its ingenious execution of non-linear storytelling, cinematography, and writing, the film focuses on three essential tools of filmmaking: language, non-verbal communication, and suspense. When thinking of these brilliant devices, one scene in particular comes to mind. The first is the very opening scene of the film involving Landa interrogating a French farmer, Perrier LePadite, concerning the whereabouts his Jewish neighbors. The scene is rife with symbolism and underlying tension. In the very beginning, for example, Landa has several interactions with LePadite’s daughters that immediately set the audience on edge; he claims that “each daughter is more beautiful than the last”, taking great care to kiss the eldest daughter’s hand and maintain intense eye contact, then rather forcefully grabs another daughter’s wrist to request milk instead of wine as a beverage. In addition to this subtle yet overt dominance over the LePadites, milk in both film and literature is often drank by the villains of the story to show their consumption of everything pure and innocent in the world. In just five short minutes with minimal revealing dialogue, Tarantino has already both established the power dynamics of the scene and captured the audience’s attention.

As the scene progresses, Landa makes subtle assertions of his power over LePadite; he switches to English instead of remaining in the vernacular French–indicating his dominating presence in several cultures and adaptability to any situation–, asks LePadite to share what nightmarish tales he has heard of him, and smokes a comically large pipe in comparison to LePadite’s. The peak tension of the scene can be found when it is revealed that the Dreyfus family is hiding under the floorboards as they speak. This shocking twist is a direct reference to Hitchcock’s “bomb under the table theory”, and harnesses the elements of suspense in a masterful way. Hitchcock’s theory asserts that the key difference between suspense and surprise is the amount of information the audience possesses; if the audience is aware that there is a ticking bomb under the table, for example, a menial conversation suddenly becomesmuch more significant and the audience hangs onto every word. This concept is directly applied to this scene, and through masterful direction and writing Tarantino literally places a “bomb” under the table and shocks his audience.

After a beautifully harrowing monologue exploring the analogy of a rat versus a squirrel compared to a Jewish person versus a gentile, Landa reveals that he is aware of the Dreyfuses’ presence. Once LePadite confesses, Landa switches back to the vernacular French–providing the Dreyfus family with a disturbing false sense of security and confirming their inferiority/helplessness to the audience–and swiftly executes the family. This scene not only displays the horrors of Nazi-occupied Europe that occurred on a daily basis during this time period, but also displays the ingenious of Tarantino’s filmmaking and use of visual cues and non-verbal devices to tell a truly fascinating story. This scene is one of many in the film that establishes Tarantino as a brilliant director, writer, and storyteller.

In addition to the success of the individual scenes, the film holds layers of deeper meaning that stretch far beyond the scope of Nazi Germany. On the surface level, the film is a bizarrely inaccurate historical account of the events of WWII. Tarantino exhibits his signature trademarks of bloody violence, Samuel L. Jackson, and wildly unnecessary feet shots, while spinning a universally accepted narrative that “Nazis are bad” and that good will always prevail.

Just below this surface level, though, the film has an entirely different message to spread. For one, the movie attests to the often-explosive power of cinema. Movies throughout history have been used to diffuse propaganda into popular culture, expose the ills and wrongdoings of society, or inspire a nation to take action. By making a film that focuses primarily on this power–and resolves with the literal explosion of a cinema–, Tarantino notes that the world of film is essential to society and has a lasting influence over the modern world.

Diving even deeper still, this film actually serves as an allegory for Tarantino’s plights in Hollywood. For starters, an iconic stamp of the famed director’s is the various allusions to spaghetti Western movies. The Universal Studios logo at the very beginning of the film is actually from the 1960s, the same time period as the peak of the “Wild West” filmmaking industry. Chapter 1 is entitled “Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France”, referencing the 1968 film, Once Upon a Time in the West (nine years later, Tarantino would go on to produce his 2018 film, entitled Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). The opening scene and shots themselves are a direct parallel to the 1966 film, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The general narrative, although taking place in WWII Europe, follows a classic fight between good and evil, embodying the overarching themes of most Western films created during the 1960s.

Not only does this film directly allude to Tarantino and his Western-inspired direction, but it also tells his story in Hollywood. Although the famed director has received critical acclaim for several of his films, he has never won an Academy Award for Best Picture or Best Director. Tarantino has always felt isolated from the Oscar culture, and has desired to make movies in his own interest rather than those of the awards shows or “classic” cinema culture. Because of this, his character can be found embedded in Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine. Raine arrives in France completely unaffected by the more “traditional” methods of warfare–methods of filmmaking, in Tarantino’s case–, and desires only to “collect Nazi scalps” and do what he believes is right. At the climax of the film, Raine does his part to take cinema culture by storm–effectively lighting it on fire–and make his mark on the industry. At the very end of the movie in a classic Tarantino low-angle shot, Raine says with satisfaction, “Y’know something, Utivich? I think this might just be my masterpiece.” When viewing the film through the lens of Tarantino’s own life experiences, it is clear that the director told his story through his art. It is through this film that Tarantino not only displayed his genius and success in his craft, but also asserted to the world that he is, in fact, here to stay.

Sources:

Inglorious Basterds. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, performances by Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, and Mélanie Laurent, Universal Studios, 2009.